Messages - billymahogany

UF consistantly ranks about 10 below UGA in the us news rankings. What affect would that have on employment prospects? Also UF is the top law school in Florida where UGA is second to Emory in Georgia. Is that significant?

Can anyone comment on UF's decline in the rankings and if they think UF will bounce back.

Best Advice:1. Apply early2. Do all "optional" essays3. Study for the LSAT4. Get LOR's from professors that actually know you5. Proofread your applications before submitting them6. Make sure your personal statement is personal, and that it shows you know where you've been and where you're going

Maybe in 20 or 30 years this should be question. Right now this shouldn't even be a question. UM is an easy choice.FIU has absolutely no name recognition outside Miami.It is debatable that they even have a name in Miami.I love how people always think because a school is cheap that makes it a great school. This is nonsense. Just because FIU is cheap does not mean it will improve your career options.

FIU as of now has pretty poor career options. Their employment rate at graduation is less then 50%. Also that is with extremely small classes. Imagine if FIU had a class of over 400 like UM. Their employment rate at graduation would probably be 10-20%. Sure having a lesser amount of loans is fine, but try paying them off with no job.

Here is another indicator. OCI interviews. These stats are misleading because not all employers report it and some employers don't even show up.

FIU is 38UM is 154

And I have heard at FIU they don't actually show up, they just collect resumes.

In sum, FIU career options are very poor. You may have less loans, but most likely if you even have a job a graduation it will be a much lower paying job. Plus you probably will confine yourself to having to work in Miami. A UM degree does not limit your options to just Miami.

I would go to UM and not even think twice.

To me the only schools in Florida I would even consider would be UF, UM, FSU, and to a lesser degree Stetson.

Definitely a valid argument and the obvious argument for Miami. I don't think you can jump to those conclusions that 10-20% of students would be employed at graduation with a bigger class size, however. In fact, I would go as far to say that many more than the 43% reported have jobs. Now that we are actually ranked T3 with ABA approval, I think our deans are going to push harder for our graduates to fill out the employed forms.

Now that we have ABA approval, topped the bar exam list and moved into the new building, i'd like to see the reported numbers on next year's USNWR before jumping to those conclusions that we have "poor employment options."

However, your statements about Miami are valid and that degree definitely travels. No one is arguing that Miami isn't the best school in Miami.

Because of the obviously missing T2 and the nice even number of schools in the top tier, law students, profs and anyone else who give a crap about this stuff add an imaginary T2 to the mix.

So, while TECHNICALLY the University of Louisville (Brandeis) is a tier 1 school, no one (except maybe U of L students themselves) would consider them that.

No it hasn't. In fact, when USNews first started ranking law schools (back in 1987) it only ranked 20 schools TOTAL. That's why a lot of people still refer to the top 20 (or top 14 sometimes) as the first tier.

As US News's rankings became more respected and more widely used, they expanded the number of schools that they rank to include regional schools, in addition to the 15-20 national schools.